While the global alcohol industry is navigating slowing demand, economic challenges and shifting consumer habits, it’s not all doom and gloom. Smaller and more niche spirits are showing resilience, with the likes of pisco seeing further interest as Peruvian food and culture gains more widespread appreciation. The spirits’ growing presence in the cocktail world and appeal to consumers who are looking for authenticity are helping it gain traction despite wider market contractions.

“Pisco took the impact in 2023 and I think we all started resettling on how we want to do business, especially because it’s a niche category,” says Diego Loret de Mola, founder and master distiller of Barsol Pisco in the Ica Valley, Peru. “Pisco in our case settled in 2024 and grew a little bit in 2025, and up again at the end of the year. As a brand we’re up 16% from 2024.

“You compare pisco to tequila where there’s hundreds of brands and we have much less. It’s easy for the other categories to contract, a bar that has 30 whiskies can come down to 15 – in pisco you don’t have that many choices,” de Mola continues.

While the category felt the impact of the downturn in 2023, producers have since adapted their strategies, with some brands now returning to growth. As the bigger spirits categories feel the current contraction, pisco is maintaining visibility and continuing to build momentum. 

“Peru is going through great development and growth, the numbers are tremendous and investments are huge. Barsol is continuously looking at how to keep expanding territories and how to continue supplying in the same territories with better opportunities. It’s a spirit that is now more and more proven to be mixable, so even though the flagship cocktail of the category is a Pisco Sour, more bars are starting to make new cocktails with the same spirit. I see a bit more movement towards the aromatics, benefiting from a Torontel grape or Moscatel for example, giving a wider opportunity to go beyond the sour,” adds de Mola. 

Pisco Fontana, which started making pisco in 2003 before becoming a commercial venture in 2018, produces pisco in the Mala Valley. “In Peru in 2025 vs 2024, we’ve increased growth about 30%, we’re doing very well. Outside of Peru we are also growing, about 20%. We hope that this could be much more but it’s a tough time so the increase cannot be much more, but we are happy with our performance,” says co-founder Jesko Fontana. 

Mayra Ballarta, co-founder and commercial director, adds: “For me, it’s a dream and a challenge for pisco to be more renowned in the world. In Peru there are loads of brands, but elsewhere it’s much less. The price is also a challenge because pisco is more expensive. You have to do a lot of education and prove your quality. Quality is very important for us.”

With this comes the goal of educating consumers about the grape varieties used to make pisco in order to give the category more understanding to push it forward. De Mola notes: “Pisco is a spirit that has tremendous quality and characteristics depending on the different grapes. So the world is slowly starting to understand that pisco is made from many grapes and they offer different opportunities. I think the world is starting to also understand that, being a product made from grapes, it’s very much like wine, very influenced by the terroir, by the temperature and the amount of rain etc.”

Fontana agrees, adding: “Pisco is very easy to understand because to produce pisco, you need to produce wine – the same processes as any wine in the world.” With a successful domestic presence, the brand is continuing to grow its positioning in Europe, holding masterclasses in the continent as “we believe education is essential for people to discover how wonderful pisco is”, Ballarta adds.

FUTURE GROWTH 

While there’s still work needed on the education side of the category, De Mola notes challenges back home when it comes to ensuring the longevity of the grapes themselves. 

“Most agriculture is competing for the best yielding crops – blueberries have taken over the market and most will say pisco grapes won’t give the yield. We need to get more involved in planting as we’re competing with the higher yielding crops. If we rent or buy land, we’re doing it to continue to supply the industry that we’re in. We do it because we want the agricultural business to be consistent quality wise, cost wise, with what we need to preserve the quality of the liquid in the bottle that we’re going to bring to the world,” says De Mola.

“What we are doing is exploring a few more grapes. We are in the latter part of a couple of years playing with Albilla grapes which we haven’t used before, and with Mollar. Our Moscatel has been a success. We’re now experimenting with a Mosto Verde Moscatel. I don’t release pisco for the sake of releasing something. We’ve done a few private labels as limited editions, but pisco is hard to scale up, you have to be consistent. We’re in 53 countries, so I have to make sure that what I have is solid enough to supply those countries,” De Mola continues. 

Alongside grape growing, Barsol is also expanding its facilities. “We’re reaching our maximum capacity and Barsol is looking for a strategic partner to come and join us so we can expand production, actually get into the agricultural side and buy or rent land so that we can grow our own grapes and control quality, which is at the top of our priorities. 

“We don’t want volume, we want quality, and we will scale up as long as we can control that quality as we grow. Sometimes the category is too small for big companies to look at, but a mid-size investor that would like to take it to the next level would be the appropriate investor into the category.”

Despite its quality and proven ability in the mixology world, the future of pisco will depend on more than just what’s in the bottle. The category will need to balance identity and education, with some producers securing the backing of larger investors to help move pisco from a more niche offering to an established global spirit.